Una Breve Parte
by Lady Heliotrope
Summary: A rather irrelevant prelude to Opus IV. Not to be taken seriously.


**Una Breve Parte**

(A Brief Aside: An Almost-Irrelevant Prelude in Prose to Opus IV)

Scene: Cho's yearnings for Cedric thrived and grew stronger after his death, largely because the seedling of her grief happened to find a hothouse in the fantasies of two younger girls who were Hufflepuffs; there was never such a pair of ardent fangirls as these two, who admired to abstraction (even worshipped) the great hero of Hufflepuff House. They tended Cho's woes with gentle waterings of tears and hugs, not clipping these tragic flowers to the ground or compelling blooms of joys to grow in the same pot. Their histrionic tutelage confirmed to her that she ultimately meant _nothing_ in the world without a man and that the _only_ man worth her attention was long gone. They called it a tragedy of true love, but while they continued to enable the growth of Cho's unhappiness and resignation to the life of a spinster, Cho was slowly becoming weary of the plant she was cultivating and was beginning to be cognizant of the exaggeration of her melancholy.

Nonetheless, she continued to let the pervasive despair be nourished, sometimes perversely delighting in it. Compelled by whims borne of desperation and frenzy, she did research to find the means to bring back her lover. It was unbelievable to her that the finality of life's end that had touched her Muffle father in her infancy could extend to the beautiful, magical world into which she had been newly inducted. But alas, there was nothing that could truly do what she wanted most, to bring life back to the man who had died so triumphantly. There were alternatives, true, but none of them were what she sought most: a complete life of beauty and truth.

However, the poor alternatives still interested her Hufflepuff friends; until these other girls (Jane and Titania) said "why not?", Cho would never have considered truly executing any fantastic plan. In the midst of Cho's moaning for her past lover, the sympathetic ears upon which she laid her feelings had become activated in quite a way she never would have expected. Thus it was a jointly conceived idea, spontaneous and pursued with a frenzy of libidinous energy.

Their frenzy, once they began the task, was so great that even the Battle of Hogwarts could not totally interfere with their own plans, carefully laid over perhaps a month or two of potions preparation, though Cho consistently was the one with second thoughts.

Note: Canonically, Cho Chang was at the Battle of Hogwarts, but a graduate at that point, participating in the D.A., and canonically she survived. But life is messy, and no doubt Cho, like other members of the D.A., was navigating through other relationships as well. For the time being, let us presume that Jane and Titania were fellow D.A. members, though two years younger than Cho. (Ginny's year.)

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><p>"Y'know, Cho, it would be bloody wonderful if there was some way we could just bring him back from the dead. You two would get all trussed up and married, and then we'd look on in envy as you nip away to the bedchamber to do things we all wish we could do with him. What's more, even if it didn't work out, even if you only were with him <em>once, <em>I'm certain you'd be satisfied enough to get on with your life. No more painful curiosity, no more unsaid goodbyes, no more longing for the thing you never had..."

"Um...Titania, it's not possible. There's ways of making him appear, alive and well, for a very brief period...but it would only be for a very brief period, and it wouldn't be real."

"You've looked this sort of thing up?"

"Yes, it's very dark stuff. Restricted section. If I wasn't on such good terms with Madame Pince last year-"

"-Merlin's Balls! You know stuff about bringing people back from the dead!"

"Well, rather. Only theoretically, of course."

"You haven't tried anything?"

"Well, most of it is far too difficult for me...I fancy myself much more of a Runes scholar than a potions master..."

"You took the time to look it up, but you never DID anything? Stuff and nonsense!"

"Well, Jane, I feel like I'm wasting away like Faust, pining after the unreachable. To actually _do_ something of the sort would be...rather confirmatory of that. I'm not prepared to sell my soul for a goodbye kiss."

"Um, ok...but tell us, what kinds of things did you look up?"

"Well, many attempts have been made, few have been reported to be successful, many accidents have happened, few of the successful people have lived to tell the tale. There were a few that seemed to have legitimate success, but many are too far advanced for my skills, and many are missing whole parts of their instructions. Out of less than a dozen that seemed to be successful, only one seemed like it could be done by someone who didn't have a mastery in at least two subjects. This was a potion that caught my attention and it seemed somewhat doable...but it called for six people and was rather too much _Boil, Boil, Toil and Trouble_ for me to take it seriously. That, and the required ingredients were almost obscene."

"...What do you mean by 'Boil, Boil, Toil and Trouble'?"

"Never mind, Muggle thing. It just seems ridiculous to actually _do_, that's all."

"So what does it entail?"

"It would, if successful, bring Cedric back for a full day. In the flesh. But I'm humiliated to have even thought of it as a possibility."

"Come on, tell us about it! We can be trusted. And we'll help you, you know."

"Well...it's just really crazy, far more suited for the wives of a polygamous marriage than three virgins."

"I'm not a virgin."

"Nor I."

"Okay, a single virgin and her two little friends who truly know far too much for their age."

"Well, it's you who says so often of us that 'the most curious of women willingly cast down their eyes to be looked at.' You're casting down your eyes right now! How do you like that!"

"I am not, and that is not relevant at all."

"Of course it's relevant. You secretly want to know what it's like, so you tell us all the time how much you DON'T want to know. You emphasize that all you want from him is 'a kiss goodbye,' but we know you're thinking of more than that! As I keep saying, Cho, if you found a way to just do it with him, once, it'd all be-"

"-No, thank you, that would _not_ solve my problems once and for all, Titania. It's not fair of you to keep saying that after so many years. You know me better than that."

"It's just my experience tells me so, is all."

"And you are a very different person from me, I must point out."

"Of course, Cho. But really, you _must _think about _it_, sometimes."

"I would not be human if I did not _think_ once in a while, involuntarily. But on the whole, no, I do not, Jane." (sigh) "I admit that I do think meeting him again, face to face, and communicate to him fully, even for a moment, would go a long way in allowing myself to reconcile with his memory. We vowed to be each others' forever, you know, and if I could communicate my love for him and receive some sort of...absolution, I suppose...then I'd be a little bit more happy."

"But you still think the cost of trying would be too much?"

"Well, it crosses territory that is not only foreign to me, but is also unthinkable."

"What on earth does _that _mean, 'unthinkable'?"

"I think if I...were personally able to gather the ingredients, then the actual exercise would be unnecessary."

(snigger) "...do you mean you'd need the juice of his-"

"-NO! Not...not _his_."

"Yours?"

"_Wo hun ne.*_"

"That's to be taken as a yes, I think."

"And that's impossible for you because..."

"I DON'T WANT TO DO IT. The first time I wanted to be WITH him."

"Why so, Cho?"

"We'd...we'd already planned our liaison when he died. It was all planned. We were supposed to give ourselves to each other fully immediately after the final task of the Tournament. Sneak away from all the...'hullabaloo,' he called it. He knew Harry was going to win no matter _what_ he did, because Harry is Harry, of course, so we had this as a happy alternative, because he was the real hero in my eyes. Only of course it didn't quite work."

"...You told us all this a long time ago."

"Oh. Of course. Sorry."

"No need to be sorry! So what else do we need for the potion besides your-"

"-No, there's no question, this is not going to happen."

"Then why do you have a Medieval book called _The Defyance of Thanatos _in your bag, here?"

"Thinking and reading about the idea doesn't mean I intend to do it!"

"But you _want _to."

"Do I have to say it again? _I'm not intending to try it_."

"For chrissakes, Cho, why don't we just try?"

"Many reasons, Jane, including the reason that the day that Cedric died...in fact the _reason _Cedric died...was to bring He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named back to life."

"Oh, come off it, Cho, that's totally different."

"Yeah, very different. You said Cedric would, if we did this potion-brewing, come back for only one day. It's not like we're trying to bring him back to rule the world or whatnot."

"...Jane, Titania, I must emphasize this: if we _were _to do it, theoretically speaking, it should only be _just _the three of us, which means that the potion would be halved, and thus Cedric would only be with us for twelve hours."

"Brilliant, Cho! That's the spirit!"

"And, according to what I've read about this potion, it wouldn't be...a real Cedric, just how we think of him, a memory brought to life. And we must keep in mind that this potion was originally created in the days of the ancients, when a man would have a dozen wives and then be called off to war for a while...this was a potion devised by the wives for their personal entertainment in the meantime."

"Ooooooooh. _Personal entertainmen_t."

"Yes, it _is _what you are insinuating."

"Scrumptious! So does that mean we get to share?"

"Titania, how could you! This is Cho's true love we're discussing!"

"...I'm not sure. Perhaps."

"Hip hip hooray!"

"Shut your trap, Titania."

_Fin_

* * *

><p><em>*"I hate you" in Chinese, courtesy of Googletranslate.<em>

_N.B. This was originally going to be a response to the lovely reviewer _duj_, but grew to be too unwieldy and imaginative for a brief review reply. I thank her for her observations that inspired this brief jaunt into hitherto unexplored territory._


End file.
